This invention relates to electronic devices and, more particularly, to electronic devices with wireless communications capabilities such as high-frequency short-range wireless communications capabilities.
Electronic devices such as computers and cellular telephones often use wireless communications circuitry. For example, portable computers and certain handheld devices sometimes have wireless communications circuitry that supports local area network links. Cellular telephones and other devices are capable of handling remote communications with cellular telephone base stations.
In a typical scenario, long-range wireless links such as cellular telephone links are used to handle voice communications. For example, Global System for Mobile (GSM) cellular telephone links can be used to handle cellular telephone calls in the 850 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, and 1900 MHz bands. Non-voice data can also be conveyed over 2G and 3G cellular telephone links. However, due to channel capacity constraints, the amount of information that can be transferred over a cellular telephone link in a given amount of time is limited.
Wireless local area network links may be implemented using the popular IEEE 802.11 protocol (sometimes referred to as “Wi-Fi®”) in the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands. These links generally offer higher throughput than links that are based on long-range wireless communications such as cellular telephone communications. These wireless local area network links are not, however, able to transfer large data files in short periods of time. As a result, proposed schemes to exploit wireless service advertising and automatic discovery protocols using WiFi links are generally not able to effectively handle large data files.
As a result of the bandwidth constraints of conventional short-range and long-range wireless data links, systems designers are often forced to rely upon wired links. For example, the designers of portable music players typically require users to download music and video files over hardwired links. In a common scenario, a user of a music player maintains a music service account on a personal computer. When the user is interested in synchronizing the music player to the personal computer account, the user can connect the music player to the personal computer using a universal serial bus (USB) cable. Once the presence of the hardwired connection between the music player and the personal computer is detected by the music service software running on the personal computer, a data link between the music service application and the music player can be established and downloaded content from the music service account can be transferred to the music player.
This type of approach can be satisfactory, but requires a fair amount of user attention. If a user forgets to connect the music player to the USB cable or if the user is simply too busy to hook up the music player, the desired downloaded content will not be transferred.
It would therefore be desirable to be able to provide ways in which to improve the abilities of a user of a music player or other electronic device with wireless capabilities to wirelessly interact with external computing equipment.